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Donald Trump Blames the Mic

Submitted by Robin Messing on Wed, 09/28/2016 - 5:25am

What is it with the Trump campaign and technology?  Donald Trump was noticeably sniffing during much of the debate as can be seen in the following supercut.

 

Obviously Trump didn't want to admit that he was either nervous or sick, so he said that this noise was produced by a malfunctioning microphone.  But look closely at his face.  See how he closes his mouth immediately before each sniffing sound.  You can see that the expression on his face is perfectly synched with the sound of his sniffing.  It had to be a very special microphone to be able to malfunction in perfect synchronization with the expression on his face.

Interestingly enough, this is not the first time that someone involved with the Trump campaign blamed an embarrassing performance on faulty equipment.  Watch Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson make the remarkable claim in the following video that it was President Obama who invaded Afghanistan. Actually, it was President Bush who attacked Afghanistan as retaliation for 9/11.  Those who are under 25 and who have never read a newspaper or history book and those from another planet might not know this, but we attacked Afghanistan because their Taliban government was harboring Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attack.

 

 

Needless to say, Pierson received a lot of flak for her screw-up.  So what did she do? She blamed her poor performance on a faulty earpiece.

And who can forget this interview where Trump failed to condemn David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan?  Notice Trump refused to condemn Duke because he said he didn't know what he stood for. He also did not condemn the Ku Klux Klan after Jake Tapper mentioned their name.

 

 

As you can see, Trump refused to repudiated David Duke because he said that he didn't know who David Duke was.  However, as this compilation of his past statements by the Washington Post shows, he had talked about, and disavaowed David Duke several times in the past. In 2000 he even called Duke a "bigot" and a "racist".  So clearly, he lied when he said  that he didn't know who David Duke was in this interview.

Trump's supporters may argue that Trump didn't disavow Duke in his interview with Jake Tapper because  Trump had a temporary memory lapse and didn't recognize Duke's name.  But Tapper put the name in context when he called Duke a "white supremacist."  And clearly Trump had heard the words "white supremacist" because he echoed them back when he said, "I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists and so you're asking me a question that I'm supposed to be talking about pepole that I know nothing about."  He then refused to disavow white supremacist groups in general without knowing the specifics of the groups he was being asked to condemn.  Trump has to have been living under a rock all his life to know nothing about what white supremacist groups stood for.  Tapper then said, "I'm just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here" and Trump again responded that he didn't know who David Duke was.
 
 
I'm sitting in a house in Florida with a very bad earpiece that they gave me, and you could hardly hear what he was saying. But what I heard was various groups, and I don't mind disavowing anybody, and I disavowed David Duke and I disavowed him the day before at a major news conference, which is surprising because he was at the major news conference, CNN was at the major news conference, and they heard me very easily disavow David Duke," the Republican presidential frontrunner explained on NBC's "Today." (emphasis added)
 
Note that in stating that he disavowed Duke the day before the Tapper interview, Trump inadvertently proved that he was lying when he pretended not to know who Duke was during the interview.  But this inconsistency didn't bother Trump when he tried to prove he wasn't a racist after the Tapper interview by tweeting out a video of his disavowal at the news conference one or two days before.
 
 
 
Watch the video that Trump tweeted out to prove his disavowal of Duke.  Is it possible to have a more reluctant, half-hearted, and weak disavowel?  I don't know how anyone could watch it and come away with the impression that Trump sincerely despised Duke.  Trump was clearly trying to have it both ways. He didn't want to disavow Duke and the Klan too strongly because he didn't want to lose his white supremacist base.  But he does occasionally weakly disavow them because he knows failing to do so will make him unelectable.  Trump's disavowals have been so wimpy that white supremacists have interpreted them as winks and nods in their direction.  Compare how weak Trump's disavowal of Duke was with Ronald Reagan's forceful repudiation of white supremacists.
 

Those of us in public life can only resent the use of our names by those who seek political recognition for the repugnant doctrines of hate they espouse.

The politics of racial hatred and religious bigotry practiced by the Klan and others have no place in this country, and are destructive of the values for which America has always stood.

 
Now, I don't expect Trump to be as eloquent as Ronald Reagan was in his disavowal of the Klan. But he should have been as forceful in his criticism of the Klan as he has been in his criticism of Elizabeth Warren, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, or Hillary Clinton.  He could have at least come up with a nickname for the former Klan leader.  How about "Dummy David Duke" or "Disastrous David Duke".  Or better yet, "Disgusting David Duke".  But I guess this is too much to ask of Trump.  Why would he do something like this when he might risk losing the endorsement of the leader of the American Nazi Party?